Moral and Criminal Responsibility in Plato'sLaws

In his most practical work, the Laws , Plato combines a frank statement of the radical Socratic thesis that virtue is knowledge and vice involuntary with a prudential acceptance of the political community's need for retributive punishment. This paper examines the Laws' statements of principle regarding responsibility and punishment and compares these with the actual criminal code proposed in Book 9. The result is to show how a radical philosophic insight can be adapted to make ordinary citizens more gentle, thoughtful, and humane without sapping their moral commitments. Lessons are drawn from the Laws for the contemporary restorative justice movement.